Kolkata film fest ‘sweet revenge’ against Left Front for filmmaker Joshy Joseph

Barred from screening his feature-length documentary “One Day From A Hangman’s Life” at the Kolkata International Film Festival a decade ago by the erstwhile Left Front regime, National Award winning filmmaker Joshy Joseph says it’s a “sweet revenge” for his latest endeavour to be showcased at the 2016 edition of the fest under the Trinamool Congress rule.

In 2005, “One Day from A Hangman’s Life” was stopped from screening during the third day at the Kolkata fest by then Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, recalled Joseph.

“It is unplanned, but nevertheless sweet revenge. It is a sweet revenge feeling coming back to Nandan (the film festival venue). I was ousted from Nandan by the then regime,” Joseph told the media here.

The film was about a day in the life of Nata Mullick, the hangman who executed rape-and-murder convict Dhananjoy Chatterjee.

“There was a sequence in the film about Bhattacharjee’s wife campaigning with Mullick. Bhattacharjee felt uncomfortable with my film,” recounted Joseph, deputy director general in-charge of Films Division.

However, his latest film “Tree of Tongues in Tripura”, on two tribal musicians of the northeastern state, named Saudagar and Thanga Darlong, is being screened at the ongoing 22nd KIFF and is also an entry in the international competition in innovations in moving image.

The feature length documentary is conceptualised from a film-making workshop at the Tripura University in Agartala.

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